


The Royal Disease

by Echinoderma



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Gen, Mild Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 16:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11108235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echinoderma/pseuds/Echinoderma
Summary: He understands, now. It does not matter how tightly he tries to grasp the scraps of a happier history. Like his father, his brother, his sister as well- he must weather the burden that lies in their bloodline, a melancholy cast over them for all their life. Only now, on the eve of his long and lonely future, has he found words to put to it.-------Kurthnaga, and the troubles he did not ask for.





	The Royal Disease

 

**I.**

 

Almedha plays rough.

 

Too rough, even when she holds back. She humors him, once, and he tries his hardest to keep up with her roughhousing. It leaves him poisoned with adrenaline, nearly faint, but at the same time the rush of his heartbeat brings a lightness to his step that he finds exhilarating. Addicting. An outlet for a restlessness he never knew he had.

But the afternoon ends with scrapes and bruises and- despite his best efforts- no small dose of fear. From then on, Almedha declines even his most fervent requests to play, staunch in her refusal since she’d seen him flinch before her hand.

“Rajaion isn’t busy,” she tells him. Kurthnaga finds her in an alcove, draped lazily across the open ledge of a window. Humming a song. Picking her teeth. “Go play with him.”

He adores Rajaion. Of course he does. But his brother is nothing like Almedha; gentle and soft-spoken where she brims with a wild, ferocious energy. Goldoa’s stoicism is legendary and yet, somehow, she had grown to become the opposite. Vital despite the deadened land around her.

“It’s not the same,” he pouts, clamoring over her legs to sit cross-legged on her back. “He still treats me like a baby.”

“That’s because you are one, Kurth,” she snickers, flinging a strand of sinew from her nail. “When you’re a little older, okay? I promise.”

Years pass, and her words, her demeanor, they remain fresh in his mind, as if a tiny fragment of her passion had leached away into his memory. He remembers as much, even centuries later; nothing ever changed in their kingdom, except for her.

____________

Kurthnaga finds the hall deserted in the early reaches of morning.

 

The row had been so bad even Rajaion could not mitigate it; Kurthnaga heard the screaming echoed by the stone walls. Almedha and Father both stormed past him without a second glance, wounded raw by the other’s words despite their attempts to hide it. The next day, Father’s composure returned, but Almedha’s- Almedha’s had not.

Months passed, and still he’d seen no hint of her. Rajaion sets boundaries, warning him off every night before bed. _Just let Almedha have her space, Kurthnaga. She will come around soon. I’m sure of it_.

But the weight of his worries have made him impulsive and, in any other situation, he thinks Almedha would be proud of his initiative. Before he can talk himself out of it, he edges open her door, and calls out to her.

_Oh._ There is something in the air, harsh and metallic in a way that scathes his lungs with every breath.

“Hello?”  

Immediately there is a snarl, and a low, vicious hiss. “For the last goddamn _time,_ go _away, Rajaion_ -”

Her room is dark with the curtains drawn, but Kurthnaga sees her sit in a rush, teeth bared and hair loose and tangled down to the small of her back. As soon as she realizes her mistake, her expression smooths, and after a moment of study, she collapses back onto the bed, her voice suddenly quiet, almost inaudiably so.  

“Kurthnaga.” Her legs are crossed, one over the other, as she lays on her back. She sounds tired. “What is it?”

His breath comes shallowly, even as he tries to relax. Eyes trained on the floor, he tries not to stumble over his panicked words. “I haven’t seen you in some time. I’m worried. Everyone is.”

Footprints, strewn in frantic paths across the floor. It’s blood, he realizes that now; old and new layered over each other, the cause of his dizzying, disorienting nausea. “Sister… are you hurt?”

The question hangs for minutes before she responds, and even then it isn’t an answer. “Why don’t you come sit with me?”

The blood is warmer the closer to her he gets and when he jumps to sit beside her on the bed, he sees the source, and gags. There are neat, narrow holes driven right through her ankles, the skin peeled back and filled with ragged meat.  

The shivers wracking his body may just shake him apart. Kurthnaga manages to speak, even as both his hands rise to cover his face. “You’re bleeding.”

If Almedha notices his trepidation, she declines to mention it.

“Yes,” she says. “But you shouldn’t worry. I’m not hurt.”

After that, he becomes too frightened, too sickened to speak. The scent of blood clings to his clothes, weaves into his hair. He hopes it will come out, later. The two of them sit together, held in the dark for a long, long moment.

“Do you still want to play, Kurth?”

Truth be told- he does not. Their Father is angry, Rajaion is tired, and Almedha is… different. Kurthnaga thinks he liked it better when everything was the same.

He shakes his head. Almedha laughs.

 She turns onto her side, away from him, and he realizes his visitation has come to an end. He calls to her again, and when she ignores him, he leaves her to her musings, breathing deep when he returns to the hall. As before, she stays in her room for the rest of the day. He tries not to think too much of it.  

 

The next morning he wakes to the castle in a frenzy. Almedha has vanished; nothing left of her but a trail of scarlet footprints leading off the castle roof.

___________________________________________

 

**ii.**

 

Sometimes, he thinks Rajaion too good to be true.

 

Almedha and his Father, and the Mother he had never known; there were aspects to them that left him wondering, that he simply could not grasp. As for Rajaion, Kurthnaga, in his childish understanding, had thought his assessment to be solid. He had only ever considered him to be one thing. Kind _._

As the arguments become more frequent, he is thankful his brother is never a part of them. He does not raise his voice as Almedha and Father often do, ushering Kurthnaga from the room with murmured words and steady hand on his shoulder, dinner cut short as the shouting begins. He watches Rajaion wipe briskly at his eyes before he reaches out to hold one of his hands in a gentle grasp. _Why don’t we go for a walk, you and I?_

In their tumultuous last days, it is Rajaion who plys him into bed with the promise of a story, and Rajaion who greets him in the morning, carrying breakfast on a tray. He gives Father apologies in her name as collects the dinnerware with a plaintive smile, and sees to Almedha’s rages after he thinks Kurthnaga has fallen asleep.  

When he is older, he realizes the tremble in his brother’s hands for what it was, and wishes he had had the chance to comfort him, at least once. He knows he should not blame his nervous, younger self, but the memories of his obliviousness color the images of his youth and he cannot help the guilt that piles on, each time he relives those troubled times. Surely, even as a child, there is something he could have done.

____________

It is a fear that has ravaged him since her disappearance, and he has always trusted Rajaion to know what to say. “Is she dead?”

A horrible rasp swallows whatever Rajaion had thought to say, and Kurthnaga realizes he has made a mistake. An awful mistake. He should have kept his mouth shut. Rajaion goes rigid, pale and vulnerable in a way Kurthnaga has never seen, and he raises his fingers to his lips, aghast.

“No- no. Of course not. I certainly would know if she had-.”

_Died._ He chokes on the last word, swallowing it down like poison. Rajaion draws closer to him, cradles Kurthnaga’s fragile hands in his own. “Do not worry, Kurthnaga. I’m sure Almedha is not- dead. It will all be alright, I promise.”

His hands are wet, warmer than usual, and Kurthnaga keeps his eyes trained on his brother’s hollowed face, afraid of the sight that might confront him should he look down.

Rajaion pulls him tight into a hug, face pressed into his hair. Kurthnaga checks again and again that his brother’s tears are just that, and nothing worse. “I love you, Kurthnaga. And I shall be happy to see you when I return- Almedha and I both.”

 

It becomes Kurthnaga’s very last memory of him: that acrid scent, his reddened eyes, and the blood coating his hand. By morning, there is another vacancy in the castle.

___________________________________________

 

**iii.**

And then, there was only the two of them.

 

He finds it hard to put words to the aversion he feels. Kurthnaga loves his father dearly, but to be in the same room with him- it makes his skin itch and his heart shudder oddly in his chest. Dheginsea moves anciently, ponderous and slow, and his words are always spartan, even at his warmest. He does not speak of Almedha, or Rajaion, and Kurthnaga knows intrinsically that it is not something he should bring up.

With nowhere else to be, he spends his days sitting quietly in a chair at his father’s side, trying to spin answers out of the events beyond his adolescent understanding. The meetings held with the council, the woes laid bare by the townspeople, the border reports; it is a deluge of information, but never did they mention anything about his siblings. As if they had been wiped clean from memory, carried away by the flow of time.

The worst thing Dheginsea ever says to him is over dinner, after a heavy and wretched silence. Uncerimonial and delivered with a dispassionate air. _You, Kurthnaga, are next in line._

It leaves him feeling fevered, sick with vertigo; the ground tilting as he sits still in his chair, and he strains his eyes to discern his father’s expression. He wants to scream, or cry,  ask if this is truly the end of it. A _re you giving up, Father?_

But his jaw locks shut and his throat constricts tight around the words and his father, the King, offers nothing else for the rest of the night.

____________

“Come, Kurthnaga. Why don’t I tell you a story?”

Even at their best, Kurthnaga finds his father’s stories middling and dull. Rajaion would leave him soothed into a slumber, while Almedha left him on the edge of his seat. His father, however, speaks in a droning monotone, and Kurthnaga finds his attention turns inward, and he is left to ruminate on his thoughts.

It is as simple as this: Dheginsea is a bad storyteller. But he is busy, and there are few alternatives when it comes to socializing. Kurthnaga does not dare ask for more.

The tale he has chosen is about his mother, the Queen. He enjoyed hearing his siblings speak of her, but with his father he feels only a dragging guilt that exacerbates his discomfort. Still, he endures.  

(Although, if he strains, maybe there is the barest bit of emotion in his voice. A gravelled roughness, scar tissue thick.)

Dheginsea stops for a deep, shuddering breath, and the silence descends like a cloud of a miasma.

“Father,” Kurthnaga whimpers with a sharp tug on his father’s sleeve. “Your side.”

Slowly, Dheginsea places a hand to the wound. A dark stain spreads beneath it, black against the green of his robes.

It is a disorienting sight. Kurthnaga has to turn away as the blood starts to run between his father’s fingers. A reminder of his sibling’s desertion, a sign of spoiled mood. He wonders how his father hurts, if he harbors the caginess he came to associate with his sister, or the endless anxiety that dragged his brother down. Maybe that is why he seems so empty, now; his spirit given fully to his fitful, emotional spawn.

At Kurthnaga’s silent horror, Dheginsea remains unmoved, as he is in the face of all things. He gathers his robe to hold the split together.

“It is just an old wound, Kurthnaga. Pay it no mind.”

Then: “ Do you want me to finish the story?"

_No._ “I’m tired, Father.”

To be truthful, he would like to cry alone. Dheginsea sighs, and his weight leaves the bed.

 

“Yes… It is a long tale. I shall tell you the rest another night.”  

___________________________________________

 

**iv.**

 

He finds the days to be quite empty, when he returns.

 

It is difficult to think of himself as King, and harder still to lead the remnants of his kingdom. He was the youngest, an observer for most of his short life, and he had always thought ( _hoped)_ he would never rule at all. That his family would be one day reunited, and things would once again be well.

The royal crypt is, in many ways, a compliment to the throne his father left behind. Crafted from unyielding stone, carved meticulously by the few artisans they had left. It had taken years to complete, and all the while, Kurthnaga could not quiet the bitter, dissenting voice within. He didn’t even have the body.

Ena and Nasir, Gareth, a handful of civilians- there is no one else to attend. He gives a speech, though what he said he cannot recall, and after a short time they disperse, leaving him alone with the rest of his family.

Rajaion has a statue. Kurthnaga does not think his father would want one as well.

The coffin is placed in the center, between the already deceased. How can he consider it to be his father’s resting place when Kurthnaga knows the truth, and viscerally so. That his body lay rotting in the ruins of a heavenly tower, dead by the hand of his own son, never reunited with the children he had missed so dearly.

____________

Once, very long ago, he and his siblings had watched the sun rise over the ocean. Almedha carried him on her back, up to a spire where Rajaion sat next to a pile of pilfered sweets (the first of only two times he had ever known him to break a rule). He remembers the stars fading into the lightening sky, the cloying sweetness of the frosting, leaning against Rajaion’s side only for Almedha to shake him roughly, a moment later. _Don’t fall asleep Kurth. You’ll miss it._

It is a good memory. Something to occupy his mind in the quiet stretches he has to himself in the dead of night and early morning.

Since the war’s end, he finds eating to be a struggle, and the simple pleasures of sleep elude him. Had he not known better, he would have blamed the onset of his illness on that.

Kurthnaga traces the dark lines under his eyes, tries not to wince at the pallor of his cheeks. “Father,” he pleads, “What shall I do?”

The answer wells in his throat, too fast for him to stop and it spills forth in splatters across the marble. His arms limbs tremble as the heaving continues, and he shudders, leaning heavily against the edges of the basin. It is a side-effect of their sensitive natures, the force of their emotions too much to be contained in their bodies. What it has led to, what they have been cursed with, is this. Spontaneous wounds and a thinned blood.

Kurthnaga wipes his mouth with a cloth and is maligned when it comes back stained crimson. Even after his episode, he feels the blood seeping from his gums, welled under his teeth and dripping slowly down his throat. Water does little to wash the away the taste. He finds a curse dancing on the tip of his tongue.

He understands, now. It does not matter how tightly he tries to grasp the scraps of a happier history. Like his father, his brother, his sister as well- he must weather the burden that lies in their bloodline, a melancholy cast over them for all their life. Only now, on the eve of his long and lonely future, has he found words to put to it.

 

_This is our punishment._

___________________________________________

 

**v.**

It is spring- or what passes for it- when he arrives.

 

Wrapped in a robe of an unfamiliar make, tanned from his days (weeks? months?) of travel. Kurthnaga nearly leaps when he lowered his hood, gripping the arm of the throne tightly enough for it to fracture.

Soren pays him no such welcome, of course. He asks for the library and leaves as briskly as he appears, gone in the direction Kurthnaga had pointed.

When he checks later that night, he finds books out of place, stacked neatly on the tables, but no other signs of his errant nephew. He figures that to be the end of it, until he stumbles across him days later, out on a balcony, staring out into the landscape. 

“I thought you left.” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but Soren doesn’t hear- or doesn’t care- that he has spoken.

Kurthnaga clears his throat. “Is there… anything I can do for you? While you’re here?”

“No.” The answer is immediate, spoken harshly as Soren turns away from the view, towards the corridor. “It’s none of your business.”

_But it is._ He leaves, and Kurthnaga wants to follow, grab him from the sleeve and beg, if need be. _Let me help._

He stays on the balcony in the wake of Soren’s absence, eyes fixated on the banister. There’s a smear of blood, stark against the white; maybe he knows why Soren is here after all.

____________

“May I?” Kurthnaga reaches out with a cloth held over his fingers. “You’re crying." 

“I’m not,” Soren murmurs, but he does not make a move to stop him as he has in the past, slumped in his chair, eyes closed as he rests. With a hand on Soren’s jaw to keep steady, Kurthnaga wipes at the dark rivulets that have run down to his nephew’s chin.

That tang, the sweet scent of iron; it still sickens him worse than anything else he’s ever come across. it reminds him of the war, the turmoil of his childhood. The handkerchief comes back stained scarlet, and he tucks it away into his tunic to keep it off his mind.

He finds it difficult to keep quiet, even in such company. “You look miserable.”

Soren doesn’t rebuke him, which spurs him on. The nuances of his nephew’s silence- Kurthnaga tries his best to understand. “If there is something pressing on your mind, or should you ever want to talk... I will always be there to listen. Whatever it is.”

“That won’t be necessary.” He opens his eyes and meets Kurthnaga’s own. A rare occurrence. Another track of blood runs down the hollow of his cheeks when he speaks, welled thick along his eyelashes. “I’m only here for a lack of anywhere else to be.”

His rejection doesn’t sting as much as it once did. Perhaps Kurthnaga has simply become desensitized. Perhaps it is a stroke of mercy that keeps the vitriol from Soren’s voice. Perhaps he has become resigned to the fact that this great chasm will forever lie between him and his family proper. That he should be happy for the occasional tender moment placed decades and decades apart.  

Perhaps they both are just tired.

For all his usual severity, Soren’s eyes are soft and wavering in the moment, shimmering even in the low light. Kurthnaga wants to tell him, give him a sense of his own history; he looks just like his mother, when she was young, does he know? She was angry and distant too, at the end. Cold in the same way.

He leaves his hand on Soren’s shoulder, and offers his apologies- as if he has anything else to give.

They must be making progress. Soren flinches but, again, does not pull away. His eyes become hidden as he lowers his gaze and Kurthnaga thinks, imagines, that he leans the slightest bit into his touch.

 

His voice barely reaches above the sound of Kurthnaga’s own breathing. “It doesn’t stop.”

The heartache, the bleeding; it follows them all their life. He remembers the wounds of his siblings, and his Father’s tender side, thinks of the taste that permanently stains his tongue.

 

“No,” he says. “It doesn’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> very self indulgent. this one got away from me but there are some good things in it i think. the wounds are a reference to the stigmata. the title is about hemophilia.


End file.
